Holy Fucking Shit You’re Dumb!

Turns out the whole “balloon boy” thing was probably all a big hoax.

For anybody who doesn’t know, last week a Ft. Collins, Colorado family made international headlines when they claimed their 6 year old son had gone aloft in a homemade balloon.  Authorities chased the thing for near on 50 miles, traffic to and from Denver International Airport was briefly re-routed in order to stay out of the potential flight path of the balloon, and the National Guard scrambled two helicopters to assist in the rescue effort.

Of course, the thing landed gently out on the plains of eastern Colorado and… no kid.  He wasn’t inside.  Authorities initially thought the worst, that he had fallen out during the flight.  A few hours later, the kid turned up at his home (which the police had searched twice already) safe and sound!  He claimed to have been hiding in the attic the whole time.

At first, everyone was relieved, of course.  But then the inevitable question was asked–if the kid was never in the balloon to begin with, why did his family think he was?  Turns out, they were all standing around watching when the thing “inadvertently” took off–there’s even this video of the takeoff, which to my eye clearly shows the kid in question walking away before the thing flies off without him in it.  Then his dad gets all ripshit about something (was the wife supposed to keep a hold of the tether?  I guess…) and kicks randomly at stuff.

Well, now we know (the alleged) whole sordid truth.  Turns out the whole thing was staged because… the couple thought it would get them a reality TV show?  Wow, really?  I guess you have to be completely insane to make that connection–pretend to send our son up in a helium balloon, incite massive media frenzy, get TV show!  Sure, it makes sense!

All I know is, this story needs to go away now.  Ok, yeah, it’s not every day a kid goes up in a homemade helium balloon.  But, now that we know he didn’t, actually, and that his family are a bunch of oddball weirdos looking for attention, I think the best thing to do is to start ignoring the shit out of them.

…in a suck contest.

Man, check this out:

Here’s the deal, for those not in the know.  King Diamond (the dude in the silly hat and the face paint) and his band Mercyful Fate were something of an underground hit back in the day, inspiring such current metal giants as Metallica to do their thing.  Later, Metallica released a CD of cover tunes, and included a “song” called Mercyful Fate which was really a medley of several Mercyful Fate songs.

The vid is from Ozzfest 2008, where someone decided it would be a good idea to have King Diamond come onstage with Metallica to sing while they played their cover versions of his songs.

Now, let me say right now that I’m a HUGE Metallica fan.  But I’m not blind to the fact that James Hetfield is a terrible singer–in the studio he can do a thousand takes and they can do their editing magic to make him sound good, but live… well, live it can get a little painful on the ears.  Normally everybody just overlooks the fact that James can’t sing live because the concert experience is all about the energy and the rocking guitars and hammering drumbeats and much less about the vocals.  Also, James wisely writes songs that fit comfortably within his tiny vocal range, which is basically “growling in the key of E”.

But when you throw another singer up there, especially one as… unique… as King Diamond, you put the focus squarely on the vocals.  You bring them front and center.  Hey, it’s King Diamond singing his tunes with Metallica!  This should be great!

It’s not.  King and James spend the next eleven minutes trying to out-awful each other.  When James tries to sing harmony with King’s erratic falsetto, it borders on comical.  No, hell with it–it IS comical.  James Hetfield requires a million takes and fancy editing tools in order to sing harmony with himself in the studio–he sure as fuck can’t pull it off live with a guy who is singing all over the map like King is.  He wisely gives up after a few tries.

For my money, the height of awful comes near the four minute mark, where they segue into a snippet from “A Corpse Without a Soul” and King and James try to do the echo vocals part together.  King’s grating falsetto barely even cuts through James’ off-key growling, and it turns into a giant clusterfuck of awful.

I seriously can’t decide if this is dumb or awesome.  I guess I’ll just let you decide…